re: Monk tank master race

Alright baddies (Daze and John and any new people who have seen the light and rolled a monk tank) here's how the fuck tanking as a monk works.

STATS MUTHAFUCKA:

-Stamina:

Defensive utility: Gives you 10 additional hit points per point of stamina, giving you a small boost to your effective health

Offensive utility: Almost completely useless offensively aside from increasing your vengeance cap. You will very rarely be able to vengeance cap without shenanagins.

Tai rating (1-10): NOPE

(Daze if you ever gem stamina ever again unless you extremely undergear the content I will go Liam Neeson on your ass)

-Agility

Defensive utility: Agility is some complex shit. So part by part agility gives you a sliver of crit and dodge and 2 attack power. Crit ill get to later and dodge is pretty self explanatory. So that just leaves attack power, which since all of our healing scales with attack power as well as our guard's absorbs it gives us a little bit more survivability.

Offensive utility: Attack power. You punch stuff slightly harder and get crit which I'll get to later.

Tai's verdict: Spraks lock cookies. You get it baseline and it does come in handy but making an effort for it is dicey. Just like Spraks cookies.

-Intellect

You play a real class. Pay no mind to this stat for bitches.

-Spirit

(See intellect)

Secondary Stats

Disclaimer: this is going to be long as shit and there may be math, you have been warned.

Defensive utility: Since elusive brew is generated from mele white swing critical hits,haste giving us more swings means more crits, and in turn more elusive brew. Also in the same vein, our gift of the Ox orbs proc highest from regular mele swings(10% chance on special attacks and 0.03X1h Weapon speed/0.06X2h Weapon Speed).Furthermore, haste is required to generate the chi needed to keep up shuffle with blackout kick, and purify our stagger with purifying brew. Theoretically we need about 4500 haste with ascension to keep 100% uptime on shuffle and have the occasional purify. Unfortunately, shit happens. So most monks typically run anywhere from 5-6k and I've seen some at 9. Point is you want to have enough energy for those desperate measures expel harms and purifies for when Lumi is too busy smiting, or Sean has his hands down his pants. The more haste you have the more self reliant you can be, however you'll see later that haste doesn't really stack up well against our other secondaries.

Offensive utility: You auto attack more... Also your ratio of Blackout kicks to Tiger palms is higher but in terms of gcd dpc 2XJab + 1 Blackout kick is not that much greater than 3X Tiger palm.

Tai's verdict: Get enough to where you feel comfortable. The more you suck the more haste you should have to make room for your mistakes.

Crit: HOLY FUCKING SHIT BALLS CRIT IS FUCKING AWESOME. It gives us a chance to do double damage and healing and procs our elusive brew AND SO MUCH MORE.

Defensive utility: BILLY MAZE HERE WITH BREWMASTER CRIT. To start off crit is one of our most reliable sources of elusive brew, and it don't give no fucks about diminishing returns, so for starters, it's pretty much dodge on steroids. BUT WAIT THERES MORE. Our muthafuckin self heals can crit. Every single one of them ,even our Ox orbs, so crit also helps us survive in that regard.

Last but not least one of my favorite most overlooked aspects of crit as a utility stat is its interaction with our statue. Our statue tosses out guards to random player for (~ 2Xattack power+14 ish k)every time we do (16X attack power) damage. Right now you're thinking to yourself "shut the fuck up Tai this has nothing to do with crit" Well fuck you too john you're wrong. Because if you look at that system of equations you'll notice the shared variable is attack power. Well what the fuck does that mean? It means that attack power increases the size of each of these guards but is inversely proportional to the rate of generation. Since you have to reach the threshold of sixteen times your attack power in damage, getting more attack power(by vengeance whoring like a boss or having more agi)will increase your damage,but not the rate at which you pump out guards. And that's where crit comes in. So the long winded point is:CRIT GIVES YOU MORE MOTHERFUCKING DAMAGE BUT IS NOT FACTORED INTO THE OX STATUE EQUATION SO IT DOESNT UP THE DAMAGE THRESHOLD AND THUS GIVES YOU MORE GUARDS!FUCK THE POLICE!

Offensive utility: it gives you a higher chance to do double damage... So there's that. Also it's important to note that crit is much more valuable offensively despite being somewhat RNG dependent than attack power because of the way vengeance works. Currently vengeance will make up 50-80% of your attack power as a tank so getting more attack power is infinitely less valuable than increasing the chance to double the value of your attack power.

Tai's Verdict: Das Hoof

Mastery: Increases the amount of damage we can stagger. Awwwww yissssss. So a quick preface before I get into mastery(Warning math inc). The way damage reduction works is very much akin to exponential decay equations like those used in half life and blood chemical levels. So let's imagine our cool downs in terms of the half life equation where the initial amount of substance is the incoming damage, and the number of separate cool downs were using is the time frame of the half life. Let's start off with 100g of radioactive whatsitfuck and whatsitfuck has a half life of 1 year and you leave it sitting for 10 years. Now let's translate that into Warcraft. That 100g of radioactive stuff is 100k damage,and the 10 years you leave it sitting means you're rolling 10 cooldowns, and the fact that it's half life means that the cooldown is a 50% reduction cooldown (I know nobody has that many fucking cooldowns unless you're a paladin but bear with me).

A= final damage taken

B= raw unmitigated damage

C= # of cooldowns rolled

D= value of the cooldown in this case 1/2

So the equation looks like this

A= B(D^C)

Let's plug in our numbers.

A=100(1/2^10)

That's a decent amount of damage reduction. However the problem is the more cooldowns you use the less each one is worth in terms of damage reduction. So if you use 2 50% reduction cooldowns you reduce 50% of the initial attack with the first cooldown, and the second cooldown reduces 50% of 50% of the damage, simplified to 25%. So by using 2 of them you've essentially cut the value of the second one in half. If that's confusing plug in 1,2, and 3 for C and take note of how the change of A gets smaller and smaller each time. The other thing you need to understand is how damage reduction works from a singular source works. The way it works is a big ass exponential curve. Easiest illustration of this point is with straight up damage reduction.If you go from 97% damage reduction to 98% damage reduction you are effectively taking 33% less damage with just a 1% increase in damage reduction. And if you go from 98% to 99% you are now taking 50% less damage with still just a 1% increase of damage reduction. So this means that if you have a singular source of damage reduction the more of that stat you have the more valuable each point becomes. This concept is the reason parry and dodge have diminishing returns, meaning the higher your % chance to parry the more parry rating you need to get to get another % chance to parry. After reading all that bullshit you've got to be wondering what the damn point is. Well the point is monks are fucking awesome. Because as a tank putting all your eggs in one basket is actually more effective for reducing damage. So where paladins have their damage reduction parceled out into sanctuary, shield of the righteous, block chance, actual armor, dodge, parry, and stackable cooldowns, monks have very few sources of damage reduction. As a monk almost all of your mitigation comes from stagger, and while you may have many sources of stagger (Ox stance, shuffle,mastery,fort brew) it all counts as one source of mitigation making it extremely potent. This is why our mastery is fucking badass. It's % reduction with no diminishing returns, and no cap (paladins cry me a river so I can use it to put out fucking eternal flame).

Defensive utility: while it doesn't reduce actually reduce your damage taken(unless you purify)it gives you more effective health and reduces spike damage and makes it suck less to heal you.

Offensive utility: Stagger damage used to show up as damage done by you back in ToT,and made you look even better on the meter than usual. However currently mastery no longer give even pretend offensive benefits.

Tai's verdict: As much as I nerd out about mastery as a stat you honestly don't need too much, especially in 10 mans. That being said it's still our best effective health stat and is awesome for tanking content above your gear.

Suggested for beginners:Momentum easy to pick up because it's a passive and still gives you a nice boost of speed

Level 30

Tai's default pick: Chi wave. Short cd can macro it to target yourself first for a quick heal what's not to love?

Level 45

Tai's default pick: Chi Brew. Most monks typically go ascension just to be able to dump more haste for other stats, but I really enjoy chi brew for the on demand chi, and elusive brew.

Suggested for beginners: Ascension. It's a passive which gives you more energy regen and a higher chi cap meaning you can mess up both energy and chi management more without repercussion.

Level 60

Tai's default pick: Leg sweep. Aoe stun nuff said.

Level 75

Tai's default pick: Dampen harm. Shit works wonders on all high damage mechanics. However it is important to note I do change this talent almost every fight.

Suggested for beginners: Healing elixirs/dampen harm. While not as effective aaa the others, healing elixirs is completely passive and will apply its effect smartly to not overheal as well as save you in a pinch. Dampen harm is also very easy to use as it lasts 45 seconds,so if you just pop it whenever you take the boss it's % health limit will mitigate the important boss mechanics with little to no management.

Level 90

Tai's default pick: Invoke Xuen. Most fights you won't need the constant aoe of RJW,and despite being a bit derpy Xuen can put out some great numbers at high vengeance.

Suggested for beginners: Invoke Xuen. Push button get tiger, very easy to use. He can also taunt dangerous adds off of you as well as certain bosses like the dark shaman making him very used friendly to new monks.

General things to understand as a tank.

-Healer inertia

Tai's first law of tanking: a disc priest smiting will tend to stay smiting unless acted upon by a fuckton of damage. As a tank in mop you're basically on your own. You are responsible for rolling cooldowns to prevent spikes, surviving most standard damage with selfheals and mitigation, and managing most of your own spikes. For the most part healers aren't really watching the tanks they're watching all the other green bars on their screen and pouncing on anyone who gets too low. Now you may ask why this is a bad thing, the reason this is bad is because a lot of healers haven't played the fight from a tank perspective. So while lumi may think its fine to keep smiting when I'm at 75% health because I've still got most of my health, that can be fatal on fights like iron juggernaut where tank damage is huge and spikey. The idea behind healer inertia is that most of the time the healers are not going to be watching or healing you when you're at high health. Healers tend to look at short term damage trends for their targeted heals. So while I may not have been taking much damage a minute ago, because I was dodging everything and only had 2 stacks of gripping despair, 2 non avoided mele swings, a tic of stagger and a tic of 4 stack gripping despair is almost enough to global a tank. You are most vulnerable when you have been taking low to moderate damage right before a spike because you will have to survive the transit time of healers swapping their attention to you.The overall point to take away from this is to understand when the healers will be watching you, and when you'll need to pop a non empowered guard to give Sean enough time to get his finger out of his ass to heal you .

- Kiting

Most tanks view kiting as cowardly and or, disruptive to the raid. In most cases they are right, however in certain scenarios it can save your ass. In traditional boss encounters kiting can serve several purposes. First and foremost is to allow for the healer inertia time mentioned above, a quick roll to the left will allow ample time for a healer to throw a flash heal on you, and keep you out of range of potentially fatal mele swings. Another neat monk specific kiting trick is to quickly roll away from a mob meleeing you and pop zen meditation to avoid another mechanic (good example of this is rolling away from rook or he to zen med a calamity). Furthermore kiting can make up for mishaps in tank swap debuffs like those on nazgrim because he cannot apply stacks outside of mele range. Lastly kiting is extremely useful in scenarios where you are the last man standing. Two quick rolls and a tigers lust can give you just enough time for your guard or expel harm to come off cooldown and give you enough health to finish soloing the boss. (Important note these techniques are to be used carefully and only in dire situations,constant use may result in your mele being really fucking mad at you.)

Vengeance and DPS

As a tank you have several goals in varying degrees of importance.

-Survive

-Threat

-Dps

These goals are listen in order of importance however threat is in a sense handed to you and survival isn't that incredibly difficult. So as a tank a decent amount of your focus should be spent on hammering out as much damage as you can on the boss. Fuck the naysayer sissies who don't vengeance whore. You want to be doing as much as you can to be getting the boss down so not doing everything you can to put damage on the boss is like showing up to raid ungemmed. You want to do everything you can and not drag your team down